Schools versus Saloons
By Thomas Jordan Jarvis
[By Thomas Jordan Jarvis, Ex-Governor of North Carolina] THERE is an eternal conflict between the schoolroom and the barroom. The schoolroom makes men, the barroom destroys them. The schoolroom takes the child and trains him to a useful life. The barroom takes the boy and trains him to a life of wrongdoing. The schoolroom fills the home with bright, happy boys and girls. The barroom fills it with ignorant, aimless, lawless inmates. The schoolhouse fills the pulpit with educated, eloquent ministers of the Gospel and pews with godly men and women. The still-house fills the jails and penitentiaries with criminals and murderers. The schoolroom sends men to the legislature, to the bench, and the executive office. The barroom sends them to the scaffold and hell. The schoolroom gives to the community an intelligent, thrifty, enterprising, refined manhood and womanhood. The barroom gives to it a thriftless, lawless, ignorant, worthless citizenship. The schoolroom carries light and knowledge into the home and community. The barroom carries darkness and sorrow and death into the home and community. The schoolroom leads to higher and better things. The barroom leads to lower and baser things. The schoolroom stands for the good, the barroom for the bad. The people that multiply and replenish the schoolrooms and destroy the barrooms are building for their posterity a future that will grow brighter and greater as they continue to multiply and replenish the schoolroom and utterly destroy the last trail of the barroom. Shall the schoolroom or the barroom triumph? There is no middle ground.